Telugu Wikipedia
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Telugu Wikipedia Logo | |
Type of site | Internet encyclopedia project |
|---|---|
| Available in | Telugu |
| Headquarters | Miami, Florida |
| Owner | Wikimedia Foundation |
| Slogan(s) | స్వేచ్ఛా విజ్ఞాన సర్వస్వము (English: Free encyclopedia) |
| Website | te.wikipedia.org |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | Optional |
| Launched | December 10, 2003 |
| Current status | online |
Content license | CC-BY-SA |
The Telugu Wikipedia was started on December 10, 2003 by Venna Nagarjuna, renowned for Padma, a system for transforming Indic text between various public and proprietary formats. As of August 28, 2016, the article count stood at 65,048 and is Fourth among the Indian language Wikipedias, next to Hindi ,Tamil and Newar.[1]
Initial growth
In 2005, Telugu Wikipedia received a much needed initial thrust with the joining of pioneer Wikipedians like Chava Kiran, Makineni Pradeep, Vyzasatya, Veeven and Chaduvari (who later spearheaded e-Telugu campaign). Vyzasatya planned and executed a project to have stubs for districts, mandals and Telugu movies with the help of a bot. The stubs were expanded into articles with the help of several volunteers from Telugu online/blogging community. Chaduvari translated and drafted many of the initial working policies. Pradeep wrote scripts to automate many of the mundane tasks. The article count became 6000.
Promotion
A symbiotic relationship fostered by the initial Telugu blogger-Wikipedian members with the larger Telugu online community proved to be a big boon for Telugu Wikipedia's initial growth. Having gained initial momentum, it was furthered by committed members like Kasubabu, Dr. Rajasekhar, Chandrakantha Rao, Ravichandra, Veeven, Kasyap, Rahamtulla and Sujatha. Wikipedia was promoted through book fairs at Hyderabad and Vijayawada with active support from e-Telugu organization and the local-language media. This generated a lot of interest among the general public
Telugu Wiktionary is another notable project, with major contribution from Sujatha. Brown's English-Telugu dictionary was incorporated into Telugu Wiktionary in its entirety using a bot script written by another pioneer Telugu Wikipedian, Makineni Pradeep.
In 2010, e-zine called Tewiki Vartha was started to share behind scenes stories of Telugu Wiki sites and wiki Editors.
Telugu wiki academies were initiated in 2009 to create more awareness in Engineering and MCA colleges in small towns of Andhra Pradesh.
In 2012, another effort was made to revitalize the Wikipedia. The community had for the first time organised a 2-day celebration in Hyderabad during April 10&11 2013, coinciding with the start of Telugu New year.[2]
and now all entire telugu wikipedia is made available in kiwix in offline also.you can download kiwix for windows and android from store freely. and you can download Telugu data dump from this link.
HMTV broadcast a documentary on Wikipedia Celebrations[3] Rajasekhar, Rahimanuddin, Malladi and Vishnuvardhan participated in a phone-in program about Wikipedia.[4][5]
Present scenario
And according to the latest survey the average growth in number of readers is 10% which is second highest growth rate in Indian Wikipedias.
Page views
Page views of Telugu Wikipedia for Oct 2013 are at 2.1M. The highest recorded page views of 4.5M were for Feb 2010.
Fonts and input methods
Any one of Unicode Telugu fonts input system is fine for Telugu Wikipedia. Some people use inscript. Many use either Google phonetic transliteration or input facility Universal Language Selector provided on Telugu Wikipedia. Currently Telugu Wikipedia is supported by Universal Language Selector (ULS), that offers both phonetic keyboard and InScript keyboard.
References
* Wikimedia India Community Newsletter